Tel Aviv regime approves 31 new settler units in southern West Bank

As Reported by Qods News Agency (Qodsna) Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group that monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said on Sunday that the units will be built in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), located 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Jerusalem al-Quds.

“For the first time in more than 20 years, Hebron will have a new Jewish neighborhood where a military camp once stood,” Israel's minister for military affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, said after a weekly cabinet meeting.

He said in a statement that the project will comprise 31 settler homes and two kindergartens.

“It is an important step in the global activity which we are carrying out to reinforce settlements in Judea and Samaria,” Lieberman added.

Peace Now said in a statement that the land on which the settler homes will be built legally belongs to the Palestinian municipality of al-Khalil.

Less than a month before US President Donald Trump took office, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.

About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.

Trump backtracked on Washington’s support for a “two-state solution” earlier this year, saying he would support any solution favored by both sides.

“Looking at two-state or one-state, I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one both parties like. I can live with either one,” the US president said during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on February 15.